React Native Declared Its Latest Version 0.60 With Interesting Updates

React native is an open-source mobile app framework developed by Facebook. It is mainly used for cross-platform mobile application development for several app development platforms like iOS, Android, Windows and many others. It becomes very popular among the mobile app developers and they love to work with React native because of its flexibility and  40% to 50% reduced app development time. 

After a month of dedication and hard work recently, the React native community has declared its updated version React 0.60. The users are very excited and curious to know about its new updates and extensive features. With the updated version of React native, the user can optimize the existing features of the previous version 0.59.

Additionally, the new version handles important migration for both Android and iOS platforms, and the other small issues in older version of 0.59 were also solved with this update to serve better user experience.

Here Are The Updates Introduced In React Native 0.60.

• A New Start Screen:

The new version 0.60 arrives with new app screen to provide more user-friendly experience. It displays requisite instructions such as links to documentation, editing App.js and how to start debug menu. At last, it also shows aligning with the upcoming website design.

• Focus On Accessibility:

The new version comes with lots of improvements in the accessibility of API for Android and iOS platform. There are many enhancements to the accessibility APIs like announceForAccessibility and improvements to roles and many others.

Here are few improvements of React Native 0.60

• The new version has included “updated Accessibility States API” for providing better web support in the future.
• Now, AccessibilityInfo.announceForAccessibility is also supported in Android.
• An accessibility flag of IOS and reduce motion are now facilitated in iOS.
• An onClick callback and a clickable prop are added for invoking actions via keyboard navigation.
  
  

• Support for Android Extension Library(AndroidX)

With React native 0.60, it has been migrated over to AndroidX. This is a noteworthy change, as the developer needs to migrate all their native codes and all the dependencies. With this migration, all the React native apps will have to utilize AndroidX for themselves. However, the community has revealed a smart temporary tool which is called “Jetifier”. You can read more about Jetifier from here.

• Auto-linking for IOS and Android:

The React native libraries usually consist of platform-specific or native code. The latest mechanism auto-linking allows your project to discover and use this code. The React native CLI has also made primary improvements to “Autolinking”.

• CocoaPods as a part of iOS:

React native for IOS provides CocoaPods by default, which is an application level dependency manager designed for swift and Objective-C Cocoa projects. Now, a developer can requisite to open this iOS platform code by using “xcworkspace” file.

At the End

While these are the already claimed updates to be made in React 0.60, but there are a few more updates that made developers curious about.

Moreover, the React native mobile application developed for both iOS and Android will remain the same across both platforms. React native has gain immense popularity for cross-platform mobile app development and it will be on-demand app technology in the future.